Chapter 9 - The Blood Only Rafael Could Give
Adrian stared at Varen as if he had spoken another language.
“My uncle’s blood?”
“Yes.”
“Why Rafael?”
“Because he carries the same unusual antigen profile as your father, but without the variant combination most likely to trigger the baby’s antibodies.”
Dr. Patel folded his arms. “You are making claims without current laboratory evidence.”
“I have the old data.”
“Then produce it.”
“It’s at the monastery.”
Adrian looked at Marco. “Get it.”
Marco was already texting.
I rubbed my stomach as another contraction rolled through me.
“Before everybody starts hunting for my missing mafia uncle-in-law, can someone explain why Adrian’s blood might be dangerous?”
Dr. Patel answered first. “We don’t know that it is. But if the baby has antibodies against an antigen Adrian carries, transfusing his blood could worsen hemolysis.”
“And Rafael doesn’t have it?”
“If Varen is correct.”
Varen nodded. “His profile was unusual. That is why he was used as a donor before.”
I looked at him.
“For me.”
“Yes.”
A thought hit me.
“You said Rafael’s blood caused my antibodies.”
“Possibly.”
“And now you’re saying his blood could save my daughter.”
“That is the irony.”
“I’m getting tired of your family’s ironies,” I told Adrian.
“So am I.”
Nora stood despite the nurse telling her not to.
“I may know where Rafael is.”
Everyone looked at her.
She grimaced and held her ribs.
“Three months ago, when he contacted my handler, he gave us a fallback location. Said if Bellini moved against him, he would go there.”
“Where?” Adrian asked.
“A church property in Pilsen.”
Marco frowned. “Saint Lucia’s?”
Nora looked surprised. “You know it?”
“My mother used to donate there.”
Adrian’s face changed.
“So did mine.”
Within twelve minutes, Marco had a team moving toward the church.
I stayed in the hospital with Adrian, because for once neither of us argued about which one of us was allowed to be reckless.
We waited.
Waiting was worse than danger.
Danger gave Adrian something to do. Waiting forced him to feel.
He sat beside my bed staring at our daughter’s heartbeat on the monitor.
“Did you name her?” he asked.
I looked at him.
“Yes.”
He waited.
“Lucia.”
His expression softened.
“After my mother?”
“No.”
He blinked.
I smiled faintly. “I liked the name before I met you.”
“Of course you did.”
“But maybe a little after her.”
Adrian looked away quickly.
His mother had died when he was twenty-five. I had only known her through photographs and stories.
“She would have loved you,” he said.
“You told me she would have terrified me.”
“Both can be true.”
The phone rang.
Marco.
Adrian answered on speaker.
“We found him.”
I sat up.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Bring him here,” Adrian said.
Marco hesitated.
“What now?”
“He’s been shot.”
My heart dropped.
“How bad?”
“Shoulder and side. Conscious. Ambulance is moving.”
Adrian stood.
“Was Bellini there?”
“No. Two bodies were.”
“Whose?”
“Unknown.”
I asked, “Can Rafael donate blood?”
Marco said, “He’s lost a lot himself.”
Dr. Patel shook his head.
“Not until he’s stabilized. We cannot drain a trauma patient.”
The absurdity of needing blood from a bleeding man nearly made me laugh.
Instead, I cried.
Quietly.
Adrian saw.
He sat beside me and did not say it would be fine.
He had finally learned that promise was sometimes cruelty.
He simply held my hand.
Rafael arrived forty minutes later on a trauma gurney.
I saw him only briefly as they rushed him past my room.
He looked older than I remembered.
Gray skin. Oxygen mask. Blood soaking the bandage near his ribs.
But when his eyes found mine, he reached toward me.
“Elena.”
I stepped closer despite the nurses.
“Did you do this?”
His eyes filled with something I had never seen there before.
Shame.
“Some of it.”
Adrian moved beside me.
Rafael looked at him.
“I’m sorry.”
Adrian’s face hardened. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
The trauma team pushed him away.
Two hours passed.
My contractions slowed under medication.
Rafael survived surgery.
And Dr. Patel received the genetic archive from Saint Matthew’s.
He spent nearly an hour with two hematologists reviewing Varen’s claims.
When he returned, he looked exhausted.
“Varen was right about one thing.”
“One?” I asked.
“The antigen profile. Rafael is the strongest match among known living relatives.”
Adrian said, “Can he donate?”
“Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow if he stabilizes, and only a small amount.”
“What if Lucia needs it before then?”
“We have alternatives. Washed O-negative units. Antigen-matched blood from the regional bank. We are not helpless.”
I nodded.
“Good.”
He looked at me carefully.
“But the archive revealed something else.”
My stomach sank.
“What?”
“Rafael is not Adrian’s biological uncle.”
Silence.
Adrian stared.
“What?”
“The family records were falsified. Genetically, Rafael is your half-brother.”
No one moved.
Adrian’s voice turned flat. “That is impossible.”
Dr. Patel handed him the file.
“The DNA says otherwise.”
Rafael was nearly twenty years older than Adrian.
Which meant Adrian’s father had not been Rafael’s brother.
He had been Rafael’s father.
I whispered, “Your grandfather raised his own grandson as a son.”
Adrian looked sick.
Then Nora, who had been reading over Dr. Patel’s shoulder, suddenly pointed at another page.
“Wait.”
“What?”
She looked at me.
“This profile.”
I followed her finger.
A name had been blacked out, but the birth date remained.
1944.
The same year as my grandfather.
Nora whispered, “Rafael and Thomas Hart share the same maternal marker.”
My skin went cold.
Dr. Patel recalculated.
Then looked up.
“Elena, there’s a strong possibility Rafael is your grandfather’s maternal half-brother.”
I stared at Adrian.
He stared at me.
Our family trees were not separate trees at all.
They were one tangled root system someone had spent eighty years trying to hide.
While Rafael was being stabilized, I watched Adrian pace the hallway outside his room. Every few steps he glanced toward the NICU doors that were not yet ours but soon might be. The contrast was almost cruel: one corridor held a man tied to the ugliest parts of his family history; the other might soon hold his daughter.
“You can sit,” I told him.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve worn a path in hospital tile worth more than my first car.”
That got a tired laugh.
Then he sat beside me and whispered, “I don’t know how to be a father without becoming like them.”
I looked at him for a long moment. “Start by being scared of becoming like them.”
He frowned.
May you like
“The dangerous men in your family were certain they were right. Maybe doubt is a better inheritance.”
Adrian looked down at his hands. “That might be the nicest terrible thing anyone has ever told me.”
